The reporters studied five-year trends of popular Halloween costumes, tracking the ones that are most in demand. Witches are at the top, while Batman has made a steady climb, from 10th in 2010 to 2nd last year.

(screenshot) Click on the chart to go to the Planet Money page and read the full article and see the interactive chart.

Costumes on the decline: Clowns, rock stars, ghosts and pumpkins. Vixens had been in the top 10 for a few years but dropped off the top list in 2013. Maybe this year they’ll make a comeback.

Like many of you, I woke up Saturday morning not knowing who Ted Bishop is, but apparently he’s a big deal in golf circles. Bishop is the PGA professional at the Legends Golf Club in Franklin, Ind., and, until last week, had one month left in his term as the PGA of America president.

Bishop lost his job, the Associated Press reports, because of a spat with golfer Ian Poulter on Twitter. The details of the back-and-forth you can read here, but the job-killing statement that Bishop makes of Poulter is this, which he posted on Facebook:

“Really? Sounds like a little school girl squealing during recess. C’MON MAN!”

That would have been bad enough; you can understand a stupid comment once. But Bishop referred to Poulter again as a “Lil Girl,” this time on Twitter.

The punishment for Bishop has been swift and harsh. He was ousted as president and stripped of the honorary title that goes with most past presidents of the organization.

Look, lots of people say boneheaded things on social media all the time, all day long. But no one should be surprised when their actions online have real-life implications. Bishop tried to defend himself by saying he didn’t really mean it, that he has daughters, that he’s pro-equality, he’s worked with women golfers, etc., etc.

He still received the punishment he deserved. When the idea of feminism is still considered a “radical” notion that men and women should be treated equally, people like Bishop need to be called out for their outdated language. Calling grown men “little girls” does nothing but prop up old sexist stereotypes that should have gone out with the 1960s.

When people like Bishop — most often rightly — get called out on social media for this kind of name-calling, it gives me hope that the tolerance for this outdated thinking is indeed on the way out.

(AP Photo) In this Sept. 9, 2014 file photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook, left, greets Bono from the band U2 after they preformed at the end of the Apple event on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Cupertino, Calif. Apple unveiled a new Apple Watch, the iPhone 6 and Apple Pay and U2 offered iTunes customers a free download of their latest album, “Songs of Innocence.”

“Oops.”

No, I’m not quoting former Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry. That’s the first word from Bono after hearing a question in a Facebook video from a fan about the band’s ubiquitous album download. The fan asked:

Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to peoples (sic) playlists ever again? It’s really rude.

“I had this beautiful idea,” Bono said. And we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that sort of thing.”

He acknowledged that the decision to download “Songs of Innocence” to every iPhone last month was a mistake, a combination of ego, self-promotion and megalomania.

Good for him. I notice, too, that though the video was tagged with “#U2nofilter,” this was not an endless Q&A. It’s hard to say how many questions were left on the proverbial cutting-room floor, but give credit where it’s due: They selected a question about the band’s download disaster, and Bono appeared sincerely contrite in his response.

Videos like this are always tricky; they can’t be truly unfiltered or unedited, or they’d go on forever. McDonald’s did a similar video outreach effort, two years after its attempt at an unfiltered social media campaign went sour. Though it will always raise eyebrows, a video like this can’t include every single bit of feedback.

But what a cynic would call censored, I call editing. Sometimes you have to leave stuff out, because any media in its unfiltered form — whether a news story, movie, novel or play — is an intolerable mess.

Let’s give U2 credit: They could have dropped that question about the iPhone debacle and the story would have been forgotten. So I suspect that the #U2unfiltered was at least a little filtered, but it still provided some refreshing candor.

FILE – In this July 21, 2010 file photo, people make their way past the McDonald’s restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. McDonalds understands its reputation for serving cheap, greasy fare is a growing liability and is trying to change in a variety of ways. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

Several decades ago, the ad slogan for McDonald’s fast-food restaurants was: “You deserve a break today.” After a few well-publicized social media disasters, you could argue that the the world’s largest restaurant chain deserves a bit of a break. In 2012, its #McDStories Twitter campaign backfired spectacularly.

Don’t worry; McDonald’s isn’t resorting to a hashtag for this latest round of outreach. As brands, police departments and politicians know, hashtag campaigns are difficult to control.

To be fair to Gov. Corbett, #pensionreformpa isn’t an issue that has caught fire on social media. (Screenshot from Twitter.com)

So what is the network of choice for McDonald’s? YouTube. Bloomberg.com reports that the restaurant has posted a video there soliciting questions, and is responding to select questions with videos. Among the questions the company answers: “Do you use pink slime or pink goop in your chicken McNuggets?” (No.)

The company doesn’t answer every question. “Would you feed McDonald’s to your own family?” and “How much do you care about the people who eat your food?” have gotten no responses as of this writing.

This is the point, and the strategic wisdom. With a YouTube video that doubles as a commercial, the company controls the conversation. No more risking the kinds of response that the disastrous #McDStories campaign invited. At least, if people respond with criticism that’s too harsh, you can edit it out.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, such a coordinated campaign runs the risk of making people think that you’re hiding too much negative feedback.

Still, it seems unlikely that this latest campaign will be as disastrous as the #McDStories campaign.

But where is that bus stop with the camera? Do they only have just one?

Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of the tech news site Re/code, told a panel on Wednesday that the old media — presumably newspapers, magazines and other dead-tree forms of publication — wishes the Internet would go away.

“I still think the old media hates the Internet and hopes it will go away,” Swisher said.

She was speaking at Vanity Fair magazine’s New Establishment Summit, as part of a panel discussion with Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti and Vice co-founder Shane Smith, moderated by David Carr of The New York Times.

No doubt, the Internet has been a disruptor of newspapers’ business model for at least the last 17 years or so. But too much attention has been paid to the argument that “newspapers are for old people, the Internet is for young people.” I’ve written about this before, but the question should not be about new vs. old technology.

I’ve said this before, but when it comes to covering and reporting the news, the medium doesn’t matter as much as the message. News organizations should try to reach all members of their audience, whether that means telling a story with a long narrative, slideshows, GIFs or tweets.

All forms are useful, depending on the story. So I ask this one familiar question in hopes of staying the battle between old and new media:

My colleague Anthony Orozco and I continued our adventures exploring the Latino restaurants in Reading by going back to the old neighborhood – my old neighborhood, specifically. I grew up around the corner from what is now Olucuilta, at Ninth and Washington streets.

But it wasn’t nostalgia that brought me back to my old stomping grounds. It was the call of pupusas – and, as we would discover, barbecue.

Adam: I tend to be wary of menus that are too big, and Olucuilta’s covers the globe: pizza, pasta, tacos, Salvadoran food and barbecue. In my humble opinion, restaurants that try to serve everything are good at nothing. But that wasn’t the case here.

Anthony: We were greeted by a manager who liked to go by “Garcia.” He had come from the Philadelphia restaurant scene only a few months ago. He told us how he had not only completed cosmetic renovations to Olucuilta, but also some construction to the menu.

By his own account, he is a fan of Italian food and specialized in smoking meats. He brought that palate of smoky barbecue to the food there, of which we got to have a taste.

Adam: It was pretty clear what we had to try after we talked to Garcia. The pupusas — thick tortillas stuffed with a variety of meat, vegetables or beans — were a no-brainer: The food is advertised on big letters in the restaurant’s big storefront windows. But I also wanted to try the barbecue, which Garcia said he’s spent the last several years perfecting.

Yes, you can get barbecue. | Reading Eagle: Adam Richter

Anthony: The pupusas were pure dynamite. The mix of cheese, beans, chicken and plush tortillas appeal to the indulgent, chubby kid inside everyone. It was decadent, delicious and pretty accessible for people who have never tried them before. Adam and I split a smoked pulled pork sandwich that had a good balance of smoky flavor and sweet sauce. I like a less sweet sauce and I also would have liked it with a bit more spice, but it was still enjoyable.

Adam: Agreed about the pupusas. For vegetarians, there was a black-bean pupusa that was out of this world. It was easily my favorite, and I’m no vegetarian — as my enjoyment of pork barbecue demonstrates.

This was my first time eating pupusas. They were worth the wait. | Reading Eagle: Anthony Orozco

I was a little disappointed in the steak tacos we had. They tasted a little dry to me, but were otherwise good. Once again, simple and straightforward wins the day. These consisted of steak, cilantro and tortillas.

Anthony: The tacos were not the restaurant’s strong suit, especially compared with the Mexican restaurants in the area. But a good attempt nonetheless.

I think that this restaurant is more of a testament to the ingenuity and jack-of-all trades mentality that can be found in Latino eateries and communities in general. I loved the fact that this Mexican construction worker stepped into a Salvadoran restaurant, fixed up the door frame and then proposed adding smoked meats to the menu. It is an example of Latinos’ willingness to jump in a new venture on trust and a handshake, something that I think is at least refreshing if not endearing.

Adam: While I wouldn’t go back there for the tacos, I would definitely go back to Olucuilta for the pupusas, and also the barbecue.